


deep waters

by wordsmithie



Category: The Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27383929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsmithie/pseuds/wordsmithie
Summary: She joined him for the eight detentions that he’d so foolishly racked up. When she walked in for the second one, he goggled at her, bug-eyed, hamming it up, asking the question without asking the question.“Like I said,” she said, slumping herself and her satchel at a table behind him, “I don’t have anything better to do.”
Relationships: John Bender & Allison Reynolds, John Bender/Allison Reynolds
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	deep waters

The thing about someone who blended into the background was that you started relying on them as a fixture and noticing when they were gone, the way you registered lamp posts during the day even if they weren’t needed, and registered the loss of them during the night when they were. 

Or maybe, it was just that he couldn't stop noticing her.  She became a dark moon in his orbit. 

It was hard to miss her drifting through the hallways and cafeteria like a dark, twitchy cloud. And it was hard not to miss her on the days that she is absent and doesn’t hover around the school buildings. He decided he liked her all in black. He knew it was meant to make her fade into the background, make her negligible, but for all that it only made her stand out more. She was a stark relief from the half-hearted preppy pastels and the obnoxious brights, and he found that his eyes needed relief. 

* * *

It had started with resentment. 

She’d caught him behind the theatre hall, kicking at the metal trash cans until his foot hurt, until he could pretend that the salty liquid springing in the corners of his eyes was from the pain, and not from being the son of a man who didn’t care enough to spare a few dollars to further his kid’s education. The metal ringing had been reverberating through his body, a pleasant dulling that almost made him forget who he was and who he couldn’t be when he’d caught sight of her in the corner of his eye. 

She’d hung back, patient, watchful, like Death come to take a new charge. She was silent when he snarled at her, and stock-still when he lunged at her. He’d been in her face, breathing heavy, her dark eyes wide and watchful behind her fringe, and his wide and brimming and full of hatred, because no one saw him cry, everyone knew boys didn’t cry, everyone knew  _ this _ boy didn’t cry, and he’d hated that she knew different. A few ashamed beats, and he’d shoved past her, his shoulder bumping into hers, dislodging her out of his angry orbit. 

* * *

It morphed into respect without his permission. 

He’d swiped an apple from Brian when he wasn’t looking because even he got bored of the terrorising sometimes. Patting his back pocket didn’t yield his switchblade, and he’d come to a stop, hands flitting from pocket to pocket, agitated, like his old man’s did whenever his license went missing. 

He cursed. Apples tasted better when they were sliced. It was one of the few certainties in his universe. 

“Here.” Her voice was quiet. She peered at him from between the strands of her hair in a detached manner. 

He frowned as he took the knife. “How did you get this?”  _ When _ had she gotten it?

“A magician never reveals her secrets,” she whispered with a smirk, eyebrows lifting performatively, doing that stupid touching-the-nose gesture.

He rolled his eyes, hating the reluctant smile he could feel on his face. He looked down, focusing on the way the knife’s edge sank into the fruit.

“Want a slice?” He didn’t know why he’d asked. He hoped she’d turn him down. 

She nodded and lowered herself onto the stairs, dropping her satchel. He found himself sitting next to her, holding out a slice. She took it from him without looking. 

“Sometimes it gets so I can’t breathe.”

Her voice was a croak, scratchy, as if she’s been coughing. He’d turned to look at her, as if that might mean he could hear her better. 

“I press it down most days, but some days you can’t. Some days the tears want to come out.” She bit into the slice and chewed. She didn’t look at him, and he couldn’t tell if it was for his benefit or hers.

He could hear the soft crunch of the apple between her teeth, the gulp as the chunk went down her throat. The closeness and the intimacy of it had made him want to recoil. 

“Anyway, it can help if you focus on something. It can help stop it, I mean. For awhile.” She coughed. “The minute hand of a clock. The way a football moves across the field. Someone kicking a trash can.” Her head had twitched a little, her gaze jumping to the side before she faced forward again. 

His world wasn’t one where strangers held out a lifeline. It wasn’t even one where those who weren’t strangers did that. Somewhere, underneath the tangle of his thoughts, his mind had reeled. 

He carved out another slice of the apple and held it out to her. She accepted it. 

* * *

It was a gradual joining.

They didn’t become joined at the hip per se, but they were joined. It was the expectation of meeting her gaze in the halls, the relief of having her nod back from across the cafeteria. 

It’s like in that book they had to read for English, with the self-righteous governess, and her loud, brooding love interest with the locked up wife. There was something that tied him and her together. 

He didn’t know if it was their ribs or what, and he knew it wasn’t something stupid like love, but he knew it would hurt if what had been joined was snapped. At least, it would hurt for the duration of his highschool life. Or so he told himself. 

* * *

They were mute adversaries on opposite sides of the battlefield, removed from their battalions. The day-to-day dramas weren’t in their scripts. The universal language of how one should be a friend was not in their vocabulary. Sometimes a passing nod was enough of a substitute for a conversation. Sometimes a conversation was a days long argument about the dichotomy of function and form in art and how only carpentry married the two perfectly. That was more his argument, and he didn’t really believe it, but it was one of the few things that made the blood rise in her cheeks, and kept her dark gaze on him for longer than two seconds and he was starting to discover that those two might be his favourite things in a world where he had very few favourite things.

* * *

It uncoiled into admiration. 

She joined him for the eight detentions that he’d so foolishly racked up. When she walked in for the second one, he goggled at her, bug-eyed, hamming it up, asking the question without asking the question. 

“Like I said,” she said, slumping herself and her satchel at a table behind him, “I don’t have anything better to do.” And she’d pulled out a sketchbook and started attacking a blank page as if her life depended on it. 

He’d bent over the desk, carving his initials into the wood, losing the fight against a smile which he chose to hide with hunched shoulders. 

* * *

It had slid into a quiet realisation.

She seemed so remote and removed that it was hard to think she might be prey to the common vultures. He’d chanced upon her in the middle of a giggling cloud of hair-flicked, slick-bloused freshman taunting her over her new look, gleeful at the fact that the “Queen of Darkness” was acceding to their tastes. 

She didn’t seem affected unless you caught the way she grated the sharp corner of her locker door against the inside of her palm, the way one booted foot shuffled against the other. And his eyes seemed wired to catch her signals. He’d growled so that the gaggling group scattered and grabbed her hand, slamming the locker shut. He’d dragged her outside, both of them silent, his blood fizzing so that it was loud in his ears. It alarmed him. When they pushed their way through the front door, he’d gasped as if he’d been the one escaping. 

“They’re bitches, but they’re right about one thing,” he’d said, turning to her. “You don’t need that headband or the shit on your eyes.” He yanked the headband off, heard her soft gasp, and tried to make up for his harshness with some restraint as he ruffled her hair, letting her fringe shadow her eyes. 

“The world can earn your eyes.” He’d wanted to kiss her forehead over her newly-freed fringe and the thought frightened him enough to send him leaping down the steps, leaving her open-mouthed and flushing red.

* * *

It had stayed with frightening certainty. 

They didn’t really last, The Breakfast Club pairs. It was a testing of the waters more than anything, taking the boat out to see if it would ride the waves. It worked well enough at the start, but none of them were made for deep waters. 

He’d probably always known that for deep waters he would need her. It was in their makeup. They were joined after all. Anchored to each other by a thread so flimsy it was invisible, so strong it was unavoidable. 

When she and Johnson dissolved something in his chest did as well. It oozed warm and unashamed in him, and he rode the high, feeling free and untethered, even though he was still part of a pair.

But it wasn’t for much longer. When he and Claire dissolved, it wasn’t as quiet, there was a little more drama. Not theatrics exactly, but Claire was in tears, even if quietly resigned. He’d returned her earring, knowing that she would appreciate this symbolic end to their short-lived coupledom, the parallel book end to close off their story. 

He tried to wait a week, but he barely made it to three days, and that was only because of the weekend in between. 

He didn’t go to any of his classes that Monday, just sat behind the theatre hall, sipping on a can of Jax and trying to guess when she’d show up. He didn’t doubt she would. It was only a matter of when.  _ They _ had been only a matter of when. He could feel the thudding of his heart against the warm brick, radiating rhythmically across his back. 

He almost didn’t notice her until she was standing right next to him. She held up an apple, and then pulled out his switchblade with a flourish. Her eyes were impish behind her fringe. “Apple?” she asked, smug. 

She lowered herself next to him and started carving out a slice. He could only shake his head and try to hold back the smile.

He took the proffered slice but lifted it to her lips, and then marvelled at how that one movement dismantled her smugness. He hadn’t known power like this. He could hear the small intake of breath before she opened her mouth. He’d stumbled onto a new kind of hunger, his eyes fix on her lips, greedy, ravenous. He pressed the sliver of fruit against her lips, watched the slow slide of it, pushed it into her mouth before following it close with his own. 

She gasped against his mouth, head tilting. “Th-the knife.”

“Mm.” He fumbled for it, tossing it away, before moving over her. 

“You taste like beer.” She was breathless, and it wasn’t enough. He wanted to take more from her. He wanted her gasping, breathing only him.

“Mmm.”

They were so close, and yet he could still feel his chest twinge, could still feel the thread between them taut and throbbing as if they were oceans apart. He hadn’t thought that a dream becoming reality would leave him so desperate. She whispered his name, and he realised that the only direction left for him was to see how deep the desperation went, just how deep the waters were. And so he dived.

**Author's Note:**

> *lobs an unpolished fic in your direction* i feel like these two just *work*, ya know? anyway, i'm obsessed with them. let me know what you think. :)


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